Immigration offices in a number of provinces have taken different measures in dealing with boat people heading to Australia through Indonesian waters, following the escalating political tension between Indonesia and Australia.

In North Sumatra, the head of immigration at the Law and Human Rights Agency, Rustanov, said that no special surveillance of boat people heading to Australia would be conducted.

“We have no business with Australia. Let boat people head there. No surveillance is needed,” Rustanov told The Jakarta Post in Medan, North Sumatra, on Friday.

Rustanov said that countless boat people had used Indonesia as a transit point to go to Australia. In cooperation with the police, he added, his office had in the past frequently arrested them.

“Now there is no need to waste energy arresting them,” said Rustanov, adding that handling boat people was very tiring.

The birth of children and clinical depression are no longer being formally reported as incidents in Australian detention centres, while self-harm events have been downgraded from critical to major, according to new guidelines from the detention service provider Serco.

Incident reports are how Serco communicates with the immigration department about events in detention centres, such as births, deaths, assaults and escapes.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is said to be disappointed that a letter sent to him by Prime Minister Tony Abbott did not contain an apology for the spying that targeted him and his inner circle.

Dr Yudhoyono has demanded Australia sign a code of conduct that will address the spying issue, insisting that an agreement must be ratified before relations between Jakarta and Canberra can return to normal.

While Dr Yudhoyono on Tuesday night welcomed a commitment in the letter from Mr Abbott that ‘Australia would not do anything in the future’ that would cause harm or damage to Indonesia, a senior Indonesian minister has said the president remains angry that there was no apology.

Industrial Minister Mohamad Suleman Hidayat was quoted in the Koran Tempo newspaper on Wednesday as saying that Dr Yudhoyono was disappointed the letter from Mr Abbott only contained a statement of regret for eavesdropping activities that targeted the president, as well as his wife and inner-circle, in 2009.

Can't pretend I'm not enjoying it If Tone and his troupe of hand-picked orangutangs are allowed to remain, they will do more damage and humiliate the fibs brand more and more by the day. But if the party moves to knife Tone and replace him, the public may very well replace them at the next election.

Clive steps into the Boats/refugees matter to make like difficult for Morriscum:

As Immigration Minister Scott Morrison vowed that 33,000 boat arrivals would remain in detention or on bridging visas indefinitely, Mr Palmer compared the treatment of women and children to a ''neo-fascist state''.

Mr Morrison said the asylum seekers would be subject to tougher conditions than would apply with temporary protection visas until Parliament agreed to restore the visa class, but Mr Palmer's remarks suggest the new Senate next year will continue to resist the move.

He said that unless the treatment of women and children asylum seekers improved, his Palmer United Party would not be supporting the return of TPVs.After the Greens and Labor combined to block the return of TPVs this week, Mr Morrison used his powers under the Migration Act to cap the number of permanent visas for boat arrivals at the number issued before the Abbott government was sworn in.

The Greens plan to introduce on Thursday legislation denying Mr Morrison the ability to act without parliamentary approval, but the government has the numbers to defeat this in the lower house.

Mr Morrison has also revealed that he had not spoken to his Indonesian counterpart for several weeks as a result of the spy scandal engulfing diplomatic relations between both countries.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop will lead a high-level delegation to Jakarta on Thursday for talks aimed at mending relations that have soured in the wake of revelations Australian spies had targeted President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his inner circle.

The visit comes more than two weeks since Indonesia suspended military, intelligence gathering and people-smuggling co-operation after it emerged last month that Australian spies attempted to tap the Indonesian president’s mobile phone, as well as that of his wife and other close political allies, in 2009.

["Federal politics in Australia, at present, is like watching a home-owner planting flowers in their front garden, knowing full well that their house is likely to be demolished for a new freeway. The flowers just aren’t that interesting until we know what’s happening with the freeway.

It is not being openly discussed, but blocking that freeway development and leaving Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s house standing will be front-of-mind for Liberal Party strategists.

What is not widely appreciated is just how likely it is that we’ll see a new half-Senate election in Western Australia.

Former federal police commissioner Mick Keelty has made his report into what went wrong in the Western Australian recount, and gave the Australian Electoral Commission a good kicking for its lax standards. It had, he said, "failed to meet its own high standards and damaged its reputation with the community and parliament".

The AEC itself has petitioned the High Court, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, to declare the election void and call another election – costing tax payers $13 million, and forcing disgruntled sandgropers to trudge, again, to polling booths.

While the Palmer United Party thinks we should just accept the first vote, in which it won a Western Australian Senate seat, Labor and the Greens have every reason to push for another election. Indeed, electoral law simply does not allow for the AEC to say “oh well, we stuffed the recount, so let’s go back to the first set of numbers”.

And a new election is the last thing Tony Abbott needs.

After the dodgy recount, in which 1370 ballot papers went missing, the first Senate result – which was three Libs, two ALP and one Palmer United Party senator – were replaced with a quite different list: three Libs, one ALP, one Green and one Sports Party senator"}

["Federal politics in Australia, at present, is like watching a home-owner planting flowers in their front garden, knowing full well that their house is likely to be demolished for a new freeway. The flowers just aren’t that interesting until we know what’s happening with the freeway.

It is not being openly discussed, but blocking that freeway development and leaving Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s house standing will be front-of-mind for Liberal Party strategists.

What is not widely appreciated is just how likely it is that we’ll see a new half-Senate election in Western Australia.

Former federal police commissioner Mick Keelty has made his report into what went wrong in the Western Australian recount, and gave the Australian Electoral Commission a good kicking for its lax standards. It had, he said, "failed to meet its own high standards and damaged its reputation with the community and parliament".

The AEC itself has petitioned the High Court, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, to declare the election void and call another election – costing tax payers $13 million, and forcing disgruntled sandgropers to trudge, again, to polling booths.

While the Palmer United Party thinks we should just accept the first vote, in which it won a Western Australian Senate seat, Labor and the Greens have every reason to push for another election. Indeed, electoral law simply does not allow for the AEC to say “oh well, we stuffed the recount, so let’s go back to the first set of numbers”.

And a new election is the last thing Tony Abbott needs.

After the dodgy recount, in which 1370 ballot papers went missing, the first Senate result – which was three Libs, two ALP and one Palmer United Party senator – were replaced with a quite different list: three Libs, one ALP, one Green and one Sports Party senator"}

Scott Morrison should be sacked... but he won't be, and that's why the Abbott government is pretty much done for.

It is not OK to conduct military incursions into other countries' territories. It has never been OK. Morrison promised never to comment on operational matters, but he had to comment on these 'repeated incursions' before the full details came from Indonesia, or from some source other than his own mouth.

All the PR smarties tell you that if you have bad news, get it out early and get it out yourself. Some news, however, goes beyond mere 'bad news' or even a misunderstanding. Military incursions into other countries' territories is in this category.

The other category error that Morrison made was to blame the Navy, as though it blundered into Indonesian waters:It was brought to my attention at just after 4.00pm Wednesday that Border Protection Command assets had, in the conduct of maritime operations associated with Operation Sovereign Borders, inadvertently entered Indonesian territorial waters on several occasions, in breach of Australian Government policy.

I should stress that this occurred unintentionally and without knowledge or sanction by the Australian Government.It strains credibility that the Navy veered off course and did not realise its vessels were in Indonesian waters. The Navy sent its vessels where government told them to go, and did what government told them to do. It is not OK to blame the military for government policy blunders, and ultimately such a tactic will work against the government rather than the military.

From now on people in the military are more likely to leak against this government. People in the military are more likely to have credibility that politicians lack. Any difference of opinion between a politician and the military will be resolved in favour of the military (with the possible exception of bullying allegations). When you consider that military personnel vote Coalition more than any other occupational grouping, this is a political own-goal as well as a governmental one.

THE blurred lines between civilian and military authority during border protection operations will become even more fuzzy next week when Immigration Minister Scott Morrison tours northern military bases.

In an unprecedented move Scott Morrison is due to visit the navy’s patrol boat base at HMAS Coonawarra in Darwin and the RAAF base at Tindal near Katherine with junior defence minister Stuart Robert.

News Corp Australia understands that some senior military officers are unhappy that the Immigration Minister will use defence facilities, personnel and equipment for photo opportunities.

No Immigration Minister has made such a visit to military bases before.

What a total moron!

They piss Indo off too much and Indo will block Australians from visiting Bali—that will see a 10% drop in Lib support!

“What Australia is doing now is clearly against and denies all comprehensive principles in dealing with the issue of asylum seekers. Australia is acting as if it can simply move the problem to its neighbour,” he said.

Dr Natalegawa was speaking outside a conference that Prime Minister Tony Abbott hastily withdrew from on Friday allegedly because of embarrassment over the imminent boat return.

However, that’s not the explanation Mr Abbott gave the Indonesians — and which was accepted by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono — that he was too busy preparing the federal budget and dealing with the Commission of Audit report.

Dr Natalegawa said there had been “no detailed explanation of the reason for his absence” and that it was “up to the Australian government to provide information”